Blog Post

Why Use a 360 Degree Assessment Consultant?

By: Marcie Levine; Chelsea DaggettPublished: 6/21/2017

After reading many articles on the benefits and weaknesses
of 360 degree assessments, I have come to a simple conclusion—that articles
often do not differentiate good 360 degree assessments from bad. Therefore, what can be a great tool for
providing (professional, appropriate) feedback and constructive progress can
also negatively impact organizational trust and lead to low morale. What SurveyConnect has found is that by using
out-of-house 360 experts (like us), you have a guide to ensure the best results possible
from your 360-degree project.

The best reason to go out-of-house when implementing a 360-degree
assessment is that the assessment consultant can ask you questions, discuss all
the parts of the 360-degree process, and help you reach the best outcome. Some examples:

What are your objectives? Why are you conducting a 360 assessment –
Development only? Performance feedback
for decision-making? A combination of
both? Our research has found that about 69%
of our customers use the 360 tool primarily for development, about 30% use it
for a mix of development and decision-making, and about 1% use it exclusively
for decision-making.

What communication should you have with the participants and their
raters? Assessment consultants can support your internal communications
program by providing FAQs so that all participants and raters know why the 360
is being deployed, who will see the data, and if there will be anonymity from
the raters’ input.

What competencies/questions will help you to achieve your objectives? How many questions should be in the
assessment? We believe that it’s
best to strive for 45 – 50 questions in your assessment. Shorter may not give the participant deep
enough feedback to understand the message; longer provides potentially more
feedback, but at what cost to the rater who may have to take multiple
assessments? Aim for a similar number of
questions per competency to aid participants’ understanding of the roll-up
competency scores.

Who will provide feedback? From
what relationship categories? Include
enough relationship categories to be able to understand the messages (e.g.,
don’t group direct reports with second level reports). However, there should be
enough raters in each category so that anonymity is protected. We generally recommend that, including the
manager, all the direct reports and 4 – 6 peers/colleagues rate participants. An ‘other’ category can also be
included. In almost all cases, the
participant also self-rates.

Who will see the reports? Will
there be a de-brief? What action(s) do
you want from the participants (the people being rated) after they have
reviewed their reports? While many clients
still have both the manager and the participant see the report and discuss
findings, we also see a shift towards organizations allowing just the
participant review the report. The
participant writes up a list of ‘lessons learned’ (one template is: what are
the three things that people value about working with me, and what are two
areas that I want to work on going forward) and submits this document to their
manager within a week of receiving the report.
The participant and the manager then discuss the 360-process and action plan. To have this debrief process work well, the
participant should have an HR professional, coach, or assessment consultant go
through the report with them. Research
shows that employees are more likely to overcome their resentment and act on
feedback if an expert consults them (Overeem; 2009, 879). If other options are not viable, at the very
least, guidelines for reading the report should be available to the participant.

There is also a perception issue with deploying a 360-degree
process in-house. In a low trust
organization, participants and raters may not feel safe providing their
assessment(s), wonder about the anonymity of responses, and have concerns over
who will see their feedback.

So, when you are ready to deploy your 360 assessments and
you consider using that free online software, think about the successful
outcome you want and determine if that free software might ultimately cost you more
with an unproductive, ineffective process.

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SurveyConnect, Inc.

The SurveyConnect Team offers complete support for every phase of 360 survey design, implementation, and analysis. From interim project support to fully outsourced solutions, we provide the services to ensure quality results throughout the survey process. Our expertise in data collection and easy-to-generate reports helps our customers maximize the results from their assessments and surveys.